This Woman Wants to Prove That Somalia Is Serious About Democracy

Fadumo Dayib is an accomplished woman. The 42-year-old mother of four spent 12 years as a healthcare and development specialist with organizations such as the European Union and United Nations, tackling problems like forced migration, gender issues, and HIV/AIDS prevention. And as of this September, Dayib, both a doctoral candidate at the University of Helsinki and fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, is also angling to become Somalia’s first female president. In her candidacy, she acts not an isolated individual, but also as the apotheosis of Somalia’s female and diaspora populations’ ballooning political heft.

For those not up to date on Somali politics, although the country is currently run by a democratic, federal government which replaced a series of transitional governments in 2012, the country actually has yet to hold full elections. (Members of parliament voted in the first president.) The country’s upcoming 2016 elections will be their first (hopefully) free and fair political contest since 1967, when the young Somali Republic elected President Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke. The assassination of Sharmarke two years later precipitated the dictatorial regime of Mohamed Siad Barre, who in turn laid the ground for decades of civil war after his 1991 ouster.

Yet despite the menace to Somalia’s democratic ambitions, diaspora Somalis have rushed to participate in the new government from day one. This is just the latest in a long trend of Somalis abroad backing their kin in the Horn of Africa—every year 1.5 million Somalis around the world remit $1.3 to two billion dollars to their relatives back home, significantly propping up the local economy. And according to Dr. Laura Hammond of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, diaspora returnees have historically been involved in social services, professional and developmental work, and local politics in Somalia. Dayib herself returned in 2006 to work in Bossaso, Puntland, on HIV/AIDS-related programs for UNICEF.

Over the past few years though, Somali women, long discouraged from taking part in social and political affairs, have struggled to overcome longstanding local taboos. Dayib maintains that as women tend to manage family budgets and maintain important, visible roles in society, it’s only right that a Somali woman ought to take a turn at running the government. Somalia proper now has 35 female members of parliament—two women in the president’s cabinet and a female foreign minister. (Although this only comes out to 14 percent of the 275-person parliament, far short of the Somali constitution’s 30 percent female quota.)

But when returnees and women build local coalitions and support bases, evidence shows they become strong, constructive links in Somalia’s political chain. If Dayib can develop successful ties with Somalia’s diverse and complex communities, her administration would be a powerful sign to her fellow diaspora members, Somali women, and the world at large that the nation has developed a robust, united, and progressive democratic front.